As in the case of Prudhon his zeal for the non-existent and hatred of the actual bordered on madness, as when he included most of the results of art, literature, and science in his comprehensive anathemas. Nevertheless his crusade for destruction appealed to no small part of the sensitive peoples of the Slavonic race, who, differing in many details, yet all have a dislike of repression and a longing to have their "fling[224]." A union in a Panslavonic League for the overthrow of the Houses of Romanoff, Hapsburg, and Hohenzollern promised to satisfy the vague longings of that much-baffled race, whose name, denoting "glorious," had become the synonym for servitude of the lowest type. Such was the creed that disturbed Eastern and Central Europe throughout the period 1847-78, now and again developing a kind of iconoclastic frenzy among its votaries. [Footnote 224: For this peculiarity and a consequent tendency to extremes, see Prof. G. Brandes _Impressions of Russia_, p. 22.] This revolutionary creed absorbed another of a different kind. The second creed was scientific and self-centred; it had its origin in the Liberal movement of the sixties, when reforms set in, even in governmental circles. The Czar, Alexander II., in 1861 freed the serfs from the control of their lords, and allotted to them part of the plots which they had hitherto worked on a servile tenure. For various reasons, which we cannot here detail, the peasants were far from satisfied with this change, weighted, as it was, by somewhat onerous terms, irksome restrictions, and warped sometimes by dishonest or hostile officials. Limited powers of local government were also granted in 1864 to the local Zemstvos or land-organisations; but these again failed to satisfy the new cravings for a real system of self-government; and the Czar, seeing that his work produced more ferment than gratitude, began at the close of the sixties to fall back into the old absolutist ways[225]. [Footnote 225: See Wallace's _Russia_, 2 vols.; _Russia under the Tzars_, by "Stepniak," vol. ii. chap. xxix.; also two lectures on Russian affairs by Prof. Vinogradoff, in _Lectures on the History of the Nineteenth Century_ (Camb. 1902).] At that time, too, a band of writers, of whom the novelist Turgenieff is the best known, were extolling the triumphs of scientific research and the benefits of Western democracy. He it was who adapted to scientific or ethical use the word "Nihilism" (already in use in France to designate Prudhon's theories), so as to represent the revolt of the individual against the religious creed and patriarchal customs of old Russia. "The fundamental principle of Nihilism," says "Stepniak," "was absolute individualism. It was the negation, in the name of individual liberty, of all the obligations imposed upon the individual by society, by family life, and by religion[226]."